We Are Being Visited

   The object, called A/2017 U1, was first detected by a researcher at the University of Hawaii. It is moving at approximately 50,000 mph and was still 15 million miles away from Earth at its closest range on October 14.  NASA claims this may be the first time an interstellar object has been observed traveling through our solar system, and it is clearly on its way out. 

Did We Already Find Life On Mars?

Gilbert Levin describes the results from NASA's Viking Mars missions (1970s). 

Why Aren't We Looking For Life On Mars?

"It is unfortunate that the Mars 2020 rover currently being developed by NASA has no experiments designed to detect living organisms on the Red Planet. It will be looking only for "signs of past life." Gilbert Levin's Labeled Release (LR) Experimental Data was indicative of active metabolism in the Martian regolith during the Viking I and Viking 2 Lander missions in the 1970s. The Viking LR data was dismissed as due to unexplained "alien chemistry" rather than biology. Even though all efforts to replicate the Viking LR data by abiotic means have failed, not a single subsequent NASA mission to Mars has searched for living microbes or evidence for ancient life. Subsequent NASA, ESA and Russian missions have established that there are vast amounts of near surface water ice and permafrost even at mid-latitudes on Mars. It is now known that on Earth microorganisms do live and grow in polar ice and permafrost. Hence there is no valid scientific reason to dismiss the Viking LR results. In consideration of Planetary Protection Protocols it is of profound importance that experiments designed to search for indigenous life on Mars be carried out before the Red Planet is hopelessly contaminated by a manned mission."


                      -Astrobiologist Richard B. Hoover
                                        August 29, 2016

A Short Trip Through the Veil Nebula

Sulfur = Red

Hydrogen = Green

Oxygen = Blue

Thank you NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope! 

Thank you, Sally Ride!

Saturn's Shadows

Image, taken in August 2011, courtesy of the Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA and NASA

This stunning view of Saturn could not be seen from Earth. It is an image captured by the cameras aboard the Cassini spacecraft. The sun is located to the upper right, out of view, and the vertical bar to the right is Saturn's very thin rings. As the sunlight pours through the rings, shadows fall on the southern part of the planet. Just beautiful!

Traces of Life Found in Meteorites; NASA's Dr. Dr. Richard Hoover Shows the Evidence

Dr. Richard Hoover at the Ice Cave of the Schirmacher Oasis, Antarctica--February  2009.  

That's not a typo in my title. Dr. Richard Hoover has two honorary Ph.D.'s, so I like to call him "Dr. Dr."  (I just read a blog article where a commenter was apparently criticizing Dr. Hoover's credentials.)
I met Dr. Hoover when I was an eighteen-year-old undergraduate at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I saw him give a presentation on the possibility of meteorites and comets spreading life throughout the cosmos, and it literally changed the direction of my life. 
Dr. Hoover is the single most influential scientist I have ever met. He has been thinking "outside the box" for longer than I have been alive. He should be considered a national treasure by any standards, and the fact that he has an honorary Ph.D. from the U.S. and Europe should shed some light on the far-reaching implications of his work.
Life probably did not start on this planet. Get used to it, folks! Once I heard Dr. Hoover say, "The Earth is not a closed ecosystem." We are constantly being bombarded by materials that mostly get burned up as they fall through our atmosphere, but many particles (and sometimes much larger objects) actually make contact with the Earth's surface. Astrobiologists like Dr. Hoover do research to determine how long microbes might be able to travel through space in a dormant state, and whether or not they could survive the heat and forces generated during a crash-landing onto a planetary surface. From everything I have seen, the general findings are a resounding "YES - it is quite possible that life could travel via meteorites and comets from one part of the galaxy to another and survive." 
I have been a big fan of Dr. Hoover since I met him in 1996. I am glad his work is finally being acknowledged by a broader audience in the U.S. (He has had near rock-star status in Europe for some time now.) 
  Here is the link to one of Dr. Hoover's many excellent papers: 

http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

NASA's New Astronauts To Hitch Rides With Russians; Commercial Transport A "Possibility" For Future

Duane Ross - the man who has been selecting astronauts for more than 30 years. Pictured here at Gila Bend, AZ. Photo courtesy of Duane Ross. 

The astronaut class of 2009 may be the last one for a while, due to federal budget cuts and major restructuring of the U.S. space program. The final U.S. Space Shuttle launch is scheduled to be completed by Atlantis, on June 28, 2011. With no new U.S. spacecraft to replace the retiring Shuttle fleet, Americans will be relying on the Russians to ferry our astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

"The current class [of astronauts] was selected to do long-duration missions," said Duane Ross, NASA's Manager for Astronaut Candidate Selection and Training. A typical mission aboard the Space Station could last anywhere from 90 to 180 days. This is quite different than the 10, 11, 12, 14 or 16-day missions done by a Space Shuttle crew. The type of crew members selected has also been affected by this new mission directive. "Now that we're going to the Space Station, there's no crew position that requires piloting skills," said Ross. Not that piloting skills aren't important, he added, but a pilot will not be necessary since the U.S. will not have any spacecraft to fly in the near foreseeable future.

Is there a good chance that NASA will select future astronauts to fly aboard commercially built hardware such as the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule? "That's a possibility," said Ross, who is supportive of commercial space efforts. "I'm behind all of them 100%," he said. 

SpaceX, a privately-owned California-based company, appears to be more than willing to take over the transportation of American astronauts. According to the SpaceX website:


         After the Space Shuttle retires next year, NASA will be  
         totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz to carry 
         astronauts to and from the International Space Station for
         a price of over $50 million per seat. The December 8 COTS
         Demo 1 flight demonstrated SpaceX is prepared to meet
         this need - and at less than half the cost. On December
         13th, we submitted our proposal to NASA's Commercial
         Crew Development Program (CCDev2) to begin work on
         preparing Dragon to carry astronauts. 


Right now, there are 60 active NASA astronauts, and NASA is currently not accepting applications for astronaut slots. Once an astronaut is selected, he or she won't actually fly for another 4 or 5 years due to the training schedule. "So you have to project a long way ahead to decide how many astronauts you need," explained Ross. "And it's hard to do because that's budget driven, and you don't know who's going to stay and who's going to leave. There are actually quite a few astronauts who leave each year." 

Duane Ross. Photo courtesy of NASA.